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"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Even better, when ignorant, don't attribute it to anything.

While I think the intelligence agencies were just incompetent to identify the proper threat, perhaps for lack of an adequately warped imagination (911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before), I don't think anyone allowed it to happen on purpose.

However, the president and his associates certainly saw the opportunity and ran with it. The damage done will take decades to undo.

"911 was a game changer in the rules of plane highjacking - nobody ever used a passenger plane as a missile before"

True for civilian planes, but it stretches the imagination a little too far that the US military could discount planes as missiles, given the precedent of pearl harbor.

It would be startling if they overlooked a threat vividly described in a best-selling novel seven years before, Debt of Honor.

Just google for Nikola Kavaja.

To the extent this is a possibility, it's more likely they didn't know exactly what 'it' was going to be, and were expecting something comparatively minor.